3.15.2014

Trickle down economics [TDE] is a failed economic policy that asserts that if you give tax cuts to the rich the profits will trickle down to the lower classes. Time has shown that this Thatcher-Regan policy is nothing more then a scam to give the rich a Free Lunch paid for by the privatization of the common wealth. Thatcher-Regan's economic policies were guided by one principle: that wealth will ‘trickle down’ to the masses from the top.

The rich sang the same tune nearly 100 years ago in Teddy Roosevelt’s time. The lyrics go: 'The market will take care of everything' If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes – especially for the wealthy – our economy will grow stronger. It’s a simple song, one that fits on a bumper sticker. The problem is it was bullshit 100 years ago and it still is. TDE has never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression and it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decades leading up to the Great Recession.

Recently the Tyee published 'The Verdict on Thatcherism Is Clear' that compared how Thatcher's theory UK squandered its oil wealth compared to Norway who refused to privatize their natural resources and demanded much higher royalties then used those monies to create a heritage fund for the future 'many' instead of a short-term windfall for the 'few'. Norway is currently ranked number one in the world on the Human Development Index.

Regan-Thatcherism is summed up with this quote from the Iron Lady: "There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers' money." This is the nucleus of neo-knucklehead thought and it's bullshit. Wealth flows from the earth, and the North Sea oil represented $8 trillion of commonly owned resources. Honest governments see resource development as a hard-nosed negotiation with their private corporate developers. They aggressively fight for their taxpayers against outside interests who naturally want to keep as much of that money as they can for themselves. Norway did a far more competent job managing their oil wealth than the ideologues in the U.K. then or the Canadians are now The numbers speak for themselves.

Thirty-five years later Regan-Thatcherism, despite being an obvious failure for 'we the people', has become a wildly successful well-funded tactic used by corporations seeking to access public resources around the world at rock-bottom prices. The Tyee article uses the UK-Norway yardstick to examine the Alberta and Saskatchewan approaches to natural resource exploitation saying, "Alberta has sold off oil as fast as foreign investors could pump it out of the ground, with criminally low royalty rates and a sop of a heritage fund that limps along lifeless at a billion or so. I once read that if Alberta had taken the Norwegian approach, that fund could be well over $100B Sask, on the other hand, knew the oil wasn't going anywhere would not sell out cheap to make profit today at the expense of future generations. They demanded high royalty rates from the beginning, knowing that eventually the market would agree to pay." Alberta, despite being one of the richest areas of the world in natural resources is virtually bankrupt. Saskatchewan has huge budget surplus.

The governments of Canada and Alberta aren't alone in this race to the bottom, one jurisdiction after another has a-greed to the corporation's terms of surrender. Publicly the 'leaders' say they must remain competitive, privately they happily accept the 'donations' to their party's coffers, the offshore bank accounts and the high paid jobs for their relatives and cronies. These 'leaders' elected or not know the score.

The 'leaders' willingly deceive their citizens by selling off their common wealth to the corporations in exchange for their own selfish interests. The 'leaders' and their cronies then sing their song in the equally corrupted corporate media. You remember the song:

'The market will take care of everything
If only we cut more regulations and taxes,
If we sell our resources competitively
Our economy will grow stronger.
A rising tide lifts all boats."

Another verse in the Regan-Thatcher 'Rush to the Bottom' song is about the Medusa like Free Trade deception. Tomorrow we'll focus on how that deception has also been used to hypnotize the many in order to undermine the common good and common sense.

La Via Campesina is the international movement which brings together millions of peasants, small and medium-size farmers, landless people, women farmers, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers from around the world. It defends small-scale sustainable agriculture as a way to promote social justice and dignity. It strongly opposes corporate driven agriculture and transnational companies that are destroying people and nature.

Sitting Up Mud

"Bokonon made mud. Bokonon said to some of the mud, "Sit up!" "See all I've made, the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars."

And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud. I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job Bokonon had done.

"Nice going, Bokonon. Nobody but you could have done it, I certainly couldn't have. I feel very unimportant compared to You. The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around. I got so much, and most mud got so little. Thank you for the honor!"

Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep. What memories for mud to have! "What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met! I loved everything I saw! Good night. Amen."

Quotes

"Our dreams draw us foward, as water whispers to the dowser's wand."- Tony Cohan

"Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide." - Tom Robbins

"Politics is how you live your life, not who you vote for!" -Jerry Rubin

"The pencil is mightier than the pen"- Robert Pirsig

"Resist much, obey little." -Walt Whitman

When the axe came into the woods, many of the trees said, “At least the handle is one of us.” — Turkish proverb

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction" - Pascal

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

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Theism?

Flying Spagetti Monster Church

The single greatest service each of us can provide to our planet, our families and ourselves is to grow our own organic food from heritage seeds. Then to save our own seed in turn, and in so doing be part of the future solution to the present day destruction being sown by GMO's, agri-business and the bio-technology giants. - Bob Wiley